The quality of Mersey is now famed

Oct 15 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

The River Mersey has been reborn, thanks to a huge clean-up. Peter Elson reports on plans to celebrate this outstanding achievement

THE River Mersey of memory is one crowded with waterborne traffic and surrounded by industry and docklands.

While these faded away, they left in their wake arguably the dirtiest river in the UK and one of the most badly polluted in western Europe.

Since then, there has been an incredible turnaround in the quality of the Mersey’s water, following hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds spent cleaning it up over two decades.

As if any evidence was needed as I researched this feature, during a walk by Princes Dock, in Liverpool, a glinting-black cormorant surfaced, with fish clearly dangling from its mouth.

Could anyone have imagined such an occurrence when the Mersey Basin Campaign was founded in 1985? How appropriate, too, it was this particular species, the likely origin of the Liver Birds and within sight of Royal Liver Building’s crowning sculptures.

The Campaign started in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots. When Michael Heseltine visited Liverpool in his role as Minister for Merseyside, one of his suggestions was that something needed to be done about the River.

At that time, it held the dubious distinction of being one of the most polluted in western Europe. What he and others understood, however, was that cleaning up a river of this size could not be done by one organisation.

Many bodies needed to get together and form long-term partnerships to focus on a clearly understood plan. It was one of the first such joint partnership organisations and was quite visionary at the time.

To raise the Campaign’s profile, the 16th annual Mersey Basin Week has just taken place, sponsored by NWH engineering company for £10,000, with more than 320 events around the North West involving more than 4,000 people.

But the Campaign’s overall achievement will be celebrated in a new book Mersey: The River That Changed the World, which will be published later this year.

Walter Menzies, chief executive of Mersey Basin Campaign, who conceived the book, says: “Cleaning up the Mersey has been a terrific achievement, so we wanted to mark it and do something special for Capital of Culture next year.

“We worked closely with Bluecoat Press and the book’s editor, Ian Wray, besides appointing an outstanding photographer, Colin McPherson. This and the related photographic travelling exhibition will create a huge amount of interest.

“We took a stall at the Liverpool 800th anniversary History Show at St George’s Hall to promote the book. We asked people for their Mersey memories and collected 121 responses.

“These included couples who met on a ferry 52 years ago and other extraordinary seafaring experiences.

“The Mersey was the gateway to the world and second city of the British Empire and its history is not over, by any means.”

What has been achieved in those 21 years of revitalising the Mersey waters? Besides cormorants in Liverpool docks, a more fundamental indicator is that salmon are back not only in the Mersey, but by 2005 they were breeding in its headwaters in Derbyshire.

This is an iconic species that used to be in the river in huge numbers, but only like clean water. No amount of public relations flim-flam will persuade the salmon to come back until conditions are satisfactory for them.

Regular river workers like Mersey Ferries’ crews see porpoise and dolphins. There are cod back in the river and, famously, an octopus has been recorded at Seacombe.

Liverpool Sailing Club and other such boating groups are more positive about the future of recreational river use.

Swimming races in the Mersey have long been a tradition, but there was always more than an element of foolhardy risk. Now, for the first time in several centuries, swimmers enjoy a far greater chance of not suffering permanent damage.

Amusingly, one such river swimming enthusiast is Dave Sandman, who works at Sandon Docks Waste Water Treatment Plant, and therefore immerses himself in the water that he actually cleans of effluent.